


swollen and hollowed

by sporeshroom



Category: Hollow Knight (Video Games)
Genre: Gen, also canon-typical violence and occurrences (death), conducting their vessel-like actions in nosks nests and gods grave, its disconnected one shots abt the vessels, its just vessels pre and post tpk going about their business, just doing vessel things
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-28
Updated: 2020-11-28
Packaged: 2021-03-10 02:34:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 763
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27756979
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sporeshroom/pseuds/sporeshroom
Summary: Tar bubbles at the surface from below, and the Sun sears from above.Follows the vessels, from before they were called that, until the end.
Comments: 5
Kudos: 13





	swollen and hollowed

**Author's Note:**

> hm so i havent written anything in a while and instead of the other things ive been working on here's this
> 
> its gonna be disconnected/somewhat connected one-shots of the vessels bcos I think that it will be fun to write
> 
> title is from capacity by big thief
> 
> also look at  my  art  ^^ it's not related to this fic im just proud of it. warning for extra eyes in the first link if thats something that freaks you out

Every wall and hallway was carpeted in thick, dry darkness. It was different to the sludge and dripping Void-dark in the layers below, but dry darkness was tall steps above no darkness.

Every twist and wind and skitter of legs in the floor under them was unfamiliar. Tight space, noise, and dry-empty- _wasted_ air, were not anything the little one had seen before.

They had not felt little in the birthplace, where they made everything, and everything was made of them. Air, and floor, and walls, all of it dripping void or jagged chitin shells. Their siblings and they and the Void.

But to describe it that way wasn’t right. They lived in the Void as much as they lived as the Void, all of it one breathing organism, toiling beneath the bustling insects above. Holding up the dirt over Its head, or straining up to reach oily fingers through to the surface.

Maybe to leave that breathing existence was to be born into the rest of the world, or maybe it was to be a curl of shell, flaking off from the greater being. Not independent, just lost. Not something to be reclaimed, but not truly a separate thing, and never not a part of it.

But Deepnest was not like that. The ground did not labour, and the walls did not pulse and strain to reach the waiting sky above. And in Deepnest, they were small; not as the blood cell of something greater (something great), but as any other shard of gravel or hard-packed dirt. It was wonderful, for something ancient to become something new.

Deepnest was dry, and the air was empty of life and oil. It was not lonely. They didn’t yet know how to be alone, or what it was. Siblings pushed up on either side.

There had been six when the earth shifted and tore gashes into the Void’s shell, and they six had spilled through the stretching, mending tar. The wound had closed behind them.

Should they need, or _really want_ , they could have tucked themselves between the shell plates, and been folded back inside when It breathed. Many travellers had entered that way, huddled and hiding in ‘caves’ that grated and squished them when the Void exhaled, and that vacuumed them into the tacky inners when It inhaled.

But travellers could not withstand Void on all surrounding sides, and needed Light to live. No Light in the Void. New shells were always appreciated, for chitin could not properly harden in or around the Void. Only empty shells, or those from outside, were hard and sharp.

And their shells did toughen with the dry, outside air. No need to waste this in Void; they had lived in the seal for many, many years. They could for many more, for forever maybe. No point to it though.

They had already lived as the blood cells of a greater being, and now they had been bled; even if they returned, they would not function as they had. And curiosity won out, now that there was something to be curious about.

So Deepnest was empty, but not lonely. The gravel hissed and growled, and blind, pale bugs scuttled all around. Their shells were brittle, and their meat was soft, and though the siblings had never eaten before, it was instinct to lash with sharp arms, and charge with strong horns. At the neck, those pale shells shift, and it was only a matter of slipping claws beneath and digging through weak flesh to the vein.

No protest from those bugs, or none that mattered. Once in a while, one be Void-soaked white flesh would drip tar, and the siblings would pull out their claws. They would watch their pale sibling blink with blind and placid eyes, and the spared bug would scuttle away.

It was easy enough, to travel Deepnest in that way, though there was no rhythm or pulse in the walls, and sometimes massive bugs burst from the floor, and chewed through dirt and rock and shell and shade. Chewed through anything that was in their way.

One sibling had lost their shell like that, too chewed and torn by the long, tunnelling bug to be usable. They had ripped its shell apart, to free the Void trapped in there. Instead of the oil and tar of their birthplace leaking from the shell through the earth, to return, their sibling had dried up. Something wispy and ribbon-like had spooled out, and stared at them.

They had stared back. And the five shells and one shade continued.

**Author's Note:**

> i am having a lot of fun i think. but like they'll all be different and hopefully it'll start to make more sense
> 
> on tumblr as falseknight


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